The United States Stamp Society has agreed to provide $3,550 to fund the digitization of the complete run (1957 to present) of the Postal History Journal (PHJ) of the Postal History Society (PHS). The Board of Governors believes that funding the PHJ digitization would be an important contribution towards philatelic research. The total number of pages to be digitized is estimated at 11,680. Scanning will be performed by American Philatelic Research Library staff using the library’s book scanning equipment. Pages will be scanned in color, even if the issue is entirely black and white, for the best image quality. The scans will be delivered in PDF format with optical character recognition so they are fully searchable.
The APRL will retain the right to make available to American Philatelic Society (APS) members the scanned issues, presented as whole issues, except for the most recent five years. USSS members, via the USSS website, will also have similar access. The complete digitized journal will be available to PHS members, and in return for the USSS funding, the PHS will acknowledge USSS support on their website, create a link on their site to the United States Stamp Society, and publish, fee-free, a USSS membership advertisement in all three of their journal issues each year for a period of two years, and thereafter at the discretion of the PHJ editor.